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History Question about Characteristics


Chogokin

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I was reading through the "Advanced Skills" in Pirates & Dragons"  today and noticed that a significant number of them used CHA as one of their base stats. Something like that goes a long way to keep CHA from being a dump stat, it actually has mechanical use.

 

As for APP vs CHA I think there is a strong case to made for them being different attributes. Whether one, both, or neither should be in a particular game is I think an open question. But I am sure we can all think of examples of physically unattractive people who were none the less possesed of great personal magnetism and leadership, and contrawise people of great physical beauty but no magnetism beyond that.

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In call of Cthulhu, APP can be interpreted either as beauty or as magnetism. It's up to the player (or the GM, for NPC) to decide which one is valid for his high APP (or lacking for his low APP) character. 

Of course, a character can have (or lack) both.

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14 hours ago, Mugen said:

. With my method, you need to roll 5+ and  spend 7 or 5 points out of 21.

Which in not all that difficult. There is about a 94% chance of rolling a 5+ on at least one of the attributes. 

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Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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On 12/23/2017 at 5:49 PM, Chogokin said:

On the topic of POW, that reminded me of something else I was pondering. Charisma is pretty much always seen as a dump stat, even with the Mythras rules that give it a role in improving skills. I know the players I had pegged all of their characters at 8 CHA. Furthermore, in that copy of Stormbringer I've read over, the author(s) actually write something to the effect that Charisma is really the least useful attribute.

So, I was thinking about dropping POW from the game and making Charisma serve as both the social attribute and the supernatural power attribute. I justify that a bit by pointing out the weird charisma of cult leaders, and the powerful force of will or personal magnetism many fictional sorcerers are described as having. 

I prefer Charisma as a stat over Appearance because it is more vague about the components. Appearance is shallow, even if a game says it includes elements beyind physical appearance the name negates much of that. Charisma can easily be sold as a combination of factors which beyond the typical appearance and personality could include being in tune with the cosmos. I could see the reverse applied as well, POW complimenting social skills.

Appearance wise there can be a fine line between a striking appearance and unattractive, that line is often crossed through intangible factors. Charles Manson was a pretty average looking dude, and his behavior was rather off putting as well (inspiring mass murder is fairly anti-social), but he certainly had an ability to get into peoples heads and stay there. 50 years in prison and he managed to get on the news on a fairly regular basis.

 

 

On 12/23/2017 at 6:17 PM, Mechashef said:

That suggestion seems wrong to me.  It seems to preclude the idea of the ugly outcast, shunned by society because of their looks or personality who works hard, studies forbidden lore, and becomes a powerful sorcerer etc.  Or the beautiful weak willed eye candy NPCs.

 

I think a large part of the reason for CHA being the least useful stat is because of a lack of role playing.  I have been involved in campaigns where CHA was very important as it was used frequently to affect interactions with NPCs, in matters such as getting information, bartering the goods gained from defeating the bad guys.  etc.  

 

I agree with this as well. For Charisma to matter, social rules need to be used. It seems like many players are fine with rules for physical things, but they want intellectual and social issues to be role played. That is fine if you play your CHA 6 character as rude, crude and "ill formed" but my experience is many players don't do that. CHA is used as a dump stat but the character is RP'd as Errol Flynn and Cary Grant rolled into one.

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2 hours ago, Toadmaster said:

I agree with this as well. For Charisma to matter, social rules need to be used. It seems like many players are fine with rules for physical things, but they want intellectual and social issues to be role played. That is fine if you play your CHA 6 character as rude, crude and "ill formed" but my experience is many players don't do that. CHA is used as a dump stat but the character is RP'd as Errol Flynn and Cary Grant rolled into one.

Exactly. I've seen games where low CHA characters are played as very socialbe and charismatic, and games where somepbody is acting like a total jerk, but has a high CHA on the character sheet.  Now some of that is bad RPGing, but some of it is due to the fact that it's hard to handle the "fine tuning" of social situations.There have been a few posts where somebody is commenting about social situations in an RPG and says something like "Why don't you just roleplay it?" My usual response is to say "For much the same reasons you don't just roleplay combat."

Its not so easy when a character is fairly personable, is acting nice, but might still have some resistance to achienving thier goal-like getting somewhere with a pretty girl, or charming thier way out of a speeding ticket.  It's pretty difficult to roleplay something like James Bond's appeal with the ladies. You need game mechanics to handle that properly just as much as you need them to resolve a firefight. 

 

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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1 hour ago, Toadmaster said:

I prefer Charisma as a stat over Appearance because it is more vague about the components. Appearance is shallow, even if a game says it includes elements beyind physical appearance the name negates much of that. Charisma can easily be sold as a combination of factors which beyond the typical appearance and personality could include being in tune with the cosmos. I could see the reverse applied as well, POW complimenting social skills.

Appearance wise there can be a fine line between a striking appearance and unattractive, that line is often crossed through intangible factors. Charles Manson was a pretty average looking dude, and his behavior was rather off putting as well (inspiring mass murder is fairly anti-social), but he certainly had an ability to get into peoples heads and stay there. 50 years in prison and he managed to get on the news on a fairly regular basis.

 

 

 

I agree with this as well. For Charisma to matter, social rules need to be used. It seems like many players are fine with rules for physical things, but they want intellectual and social issues to be role played. That is fine if you play your CHA 6 character as rude, crude and "ill formed" but my experience is many players don't do that. CHA is used as a dump stat but the character is RP'd as Errol Flynn and Cary Grant rolled into one.

All good points!

The subject of roleplaying and Charisma really makes me think and reevaluate. I have probably, as a GM, been too oblivious to the impact of low Charisma. Generally, as long as the players were willing to have their characters behave semi-rationally, I'd let them get away with reasonable goals to let the adventure flow. However, it might be more useful in the long run to have NPC's react with a moderate degree of distrust or hostility to low-Charisma PC's. 

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I think it's high Charisma and/or Appearance that is probably getting shortchanged. In real life, someone with the looks of a model gets treated nicer in a lot of ways, everyday, just because they are so cute.  Yeah, they might get hit on more often than most people, but they still get a a lot of perks from a lot of people, including those who aren't hitting on them. 

I can only think of a handful of RPGs that really factor Charisma and/or Appearance into NPC reactions and behavior. 

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Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think it's high Charisma and/or Appearance that is probably getting shortchanged. In real life, someone with the looks of a model gets treated nicer in a lot of ways, everyday, just because they are so cute.  Yeah, they might get hit on more often than most people, but they still get a a lot of perks from a lot of people, including those who aren't hitting on them. 

I can only think of a handful of RPGs that really factor Charisma and/or Appearance into NPC reactions and behavior. 

High APP is a very two-edged sword.

I expect most of us have seen the research showing that more-attractive people are seen in a better light overall (interviewers percieve them as more competent, etc).

But don't dismiss the downsides.  More than one model has suffered major depression -- bordering on suicidality -- because their entire experience of romance & intimacy was based on the shallow/aggressive types who only wanted arm-candy in public and notches on the bedpost.  They literally couldn't FIND a decent person to get close to.

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In RPGs, mechanically I suspect that PCs with high Charisma often invest heavily in social skills, so they can take advantage of whatever benefits exist for that tactic. I would agree that few games really give enough support to social interactions. I would also add that, at least in my experience, many GMs either don't seem to want to deal with social skills, or are simply uncomfortable or unpracticed with applying the game rules to social interactions.

So, the overall lesson is, don't be afraid to ask out the next unattached supermodel you see?

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17 minutes ago, Chogokin said:

So, the overall lesson is, don't be afraid to ask out the next unattached supermodel you see?

Yeah; so long as your main motivation isn't "oooo... unattached supermodel!" (which would put you firmly in the "shallow" category).

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4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah. I've read that sometimes highly attractive people aren't asked out because average looking people would consider them "out of their league." 

When I was young and stupid, I made this mistake myself.  My freshman year in the dorm.

I still kick myself, not for the lost opportunity to hook up with amazing hotness, but for not reaching out a hand and offering simple friendship.  In 20/20 hindsight, I think she was very lonely, with all the guys too intimidated (or too-obviously shallow, looking at her cleavage instead of her face when they asked her out) and all the girls were green-eyed-monster over her looks.

At the time, I couldnt envision myself NOT behiving like a fool if I approached her... so I didn't.

She was the only person I never noticed to be hanging-out with other people.  More than once I thought she looked sad; I had presumed she MUST have a BF, and just that he was back home (or at a different school) and she missed him.  Like I say:  looking back, I think she was just sad to be off at school meeting new people & all that jazz... but not.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/21/2017 at 5:16 PM, Atgxtg said:

IMO the problem is more with Sorcerers than anyone else. Those with elementals and demons can pretty much mop up the floor with those who lack them. At the very least they should have made the forces of Law more powerful in order to give Chaos some sort of fight. 

It has been too long, I know at one point I've run one of the Order guys with Virtues, but the decades have dimmed the details.  I will say I like the balance better in the current version.

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On 1/16/2018 at 12:44 PM, Algesan said:

It has been too long, I know at one point I've run one of the Order guys with Virtues, but the decades have dimmed the details.  I will say I like the balance better in the current version.

Virtual are nice but not on the same level. For example a virtuous greatsword would always do 156 damage, but a fairly minor  demon greatsword might have a +3d6 damage bonus.

 

One idea that I liked was to add Ki skills (for Land of the Ninja) for the followers of Law, especially agents. Basically Ki skills represent doing an action perfectly (which fits in well with the Lords of Law ), and in game terms lets a character raise his critical chance in a mastered skill (90%+) as if it were a separate skill. It would do a lot to make Agents of Law a viable threat.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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